1 May ’05, Sunday. Leaving York, we ended up taking the “Ring Road”, which is to save you time as it will take you out of the city traffic…but NO, it takes you into one of those traffic jams that is miles long, instead of a block or 2…I hope we have learned something from this… Our destination was from York to the coastal town of Scarborough. It should have taken us about 45 minutes to an hour, but, we decided to take a side trip to Helmsley Castle. This 12th century Norman castle sits high on a massive earthworks (hill) overlooking the Rye Valley. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of castle left, but the views, the historical story, the stone cottages of the village, the small shoppes, and a nice little restaurant that we found. We decided to split a pizza and salad, and thank god we did, it was all we could eat as it was. England has a program called “English Heritage”, which we could join for £ 40, or about $75. This will get us into over 409 “Heritage” sites all over England. We gave a quick calculation, and decided that we would probably make up the cost of the pass in the first 2 weeks…we need as much help as we can get. Now, onto our next campground…West Ayton. It’s about 12 miles outside of Scarborough. Tomorrow, we’ll head back about 10 miles to Pickering...